The Easiest Way to Capture sound from DAW in OBS – Mikulski
Site Overlay

The Easiest Way to Capture sound from DAW in OBS

Perhaps this is one of the most burning questions for a musician and a Windows user: how to capture the sound from the DAW in OBS, which simply does not know how to take the sound source from the Asio driver? It is quite possible that over time Asio or OBS will make some kind of embedded software solution. But for now, if there is no built-in Loopback function in the audio interface, then you have to look for and try all sorts of crutches: virtual cables like AsioLinkPro and Voicemeter (in which everything is not so obvious and you still need to understand their logic and configure everything correctly), alternative versions of the Asio driver (for example, FLAsio, which OBS can capture), but giving a large latency or, if the number of physical inputs/outputs of the audio interface allows – try to output everything physically (for example, Enter the output of ¾ into the input and specify its source in OBS, but I’m not sure that this is even possible), or even use a second PC for audio processing.

I have searched through a huge amount of information on this subject and only recently found a working and amazingly simple way to make everything work correctly and in just a couple of clicks! Besides, it’s free!
You just need to download and install their free bundle of ReaplugsVST plugins from the official Reaper website https://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/, among which there will be a saving ReaStream plugin.
When installing the VST plugin, be careful: first, you need to specify the number of necessary channels (Stereo will be enough); secondly, OBS scans VST only in certain directories (they cannot be assigned manually):

Program Files/Steinberg/VstPlugins/
Program Files/Common Files/Steinberg/Shared Components/
Program Files/Common Files/VST2
Program Files/Common Files/VSTPlugins/
Program Files/VSTPlugins/

Therefore, it is important to install the plugin in one of these directories. Accordingly, in the DAW settings, you will also need to add this path for scanning VST.
Then everything is quite simple.
In the DAW, we throw the ReaStream to the master bus, open the plugin and configure it:

Identifier: [default – we leave it as it is] Check-box: [Enabled — we put the flag]

Receive audio/MIDI (we are skipping this point for now)

Send audio/MIDI; IP: [we put a flag in the check-box here and specify localbroadcast] (thus, we assign the send of the sound).

Audio channels [we check that there is 2-this is for stereo]

The DAW can be collapsed. Open OBS and create an input audio capture source there (this method will not work correctly with an output audio capture source). Assign as a device any unused input of the audio interface there (if this is not possible — then a little later about what can be done in this case). Add the VST-plugin — ReaStream as a filter and repeat the same settings as above — only here we set the flag for receiving audio/MIDI sound.
That’s it! Now everything should work correctly and the sound from the DAW will be captured in OBS. Beauty!

What if all the inputs of the audio interface are busy? You can assign any busy channel, and add GAIN filter and remove the slider as much as possible to the left. Since the minimum value is 30db, in order to completely muffle the sound, you may have to duplicate this filter once or twice. The most important thing is to put the GAIN filter before the ReaStream.
Also, I can add that Voxengo also has a similar free plugin Voxengo Recorder: https://www.voxengo.com/product/recorder/ . The problem is that it exists only in the 32-bit version, and therefore for 64-bit systems, you will also need Jbridge (paid).

The attached PDF file contains screenshots, just in case it will be difficult to navigate through the text!

Of course, this information is not new and I have recently come across two videos on this topic, but before I found it, I went full circle from FLAsio to Loopback in the audio interface. Therefore, I hope that it will be useful to someone. Plus, there is a lot of unnecessary information in the video and it is likely that in text form with a squeeze from the necessary is a more compact way to convey this life hack.

0 comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments